Year 9
When he was young his father used to tell him about the home world; a blue planet, much larger than the Galilean worlds, with oceans of water instead of sulphurous desert; blue skies overhead rather than the black of space. And it made him dream.
The brain imagined and in so doing confused itself. To speak so fondly of a place that emotions are shaped from the words; to gaze into space smiling at the memory of such a place; to miss everyone and everything that makes it special�and yet be exiled from it in such an inhospitable place. A place with no sky, where specialised suits must be worn for them to survive�
The brain formed a question.
He came online at seven, an hour early, still seated in his recliner, stabiliser straps fastened around ankles and wrists as they had been at shutdown. There was a strong smell of sulphur in the air and somewhere an alarm was going off. He tore the recliner straps as if they were paper and moved towards the white room door. Outside there was pandemonium, he sensed. People running, some shouting, some barking orders�all of them sweating profusely, stinking with fear. He tried the door and it sent a current through his body. Not a huge shock, but enough to draw his attention to the blinking light on the display.
�Emergency Lockdown in progress.�
His escape blocked, he leaned towards the door and listened�
There had been ways to exit the white room then, when he was smaller and had required vents to breathe, and he had used them often to go in search of his answer. The colours in the facility were easy to imitate; shades of grey that, once learned, rippled across his flesh with the minimum of effort, allowing him to wander unseen.
He learned everything he knew about men in this way. Watching them as they worked, slept, showered, shaved, masturbated, defecated�
He focused his senses on finding his father amongst the noise. Closing in on his breathing pattern and the smell of his deoderant. He found it difficult separating the noises. So many people, so many accelerated heart beats and quickened breaths. And the smells - perspiration, urine, flatulence - all heightened by fear.
The engines were at full tilt and were causing tremors. Down below the tracks were battling with the terrain and every few seconds there was a change in the centre of gravity as they found new purchase and send the facility forward another few yards. The brain countered by increasing the weight to his lower body and sunk hooks into the floor to anchor him.
He had been drawn most often to the EVA airlock, seeking his answer via the people putting themselves at the most risk. He watched as they suited up, donning their gleaming white armour, shouting out checklists and tying buddy lines to one another. He watched them move towards the horizon through the porthole, bouncing along in straight, single file lines like caterpillars moving across a flower. And he watched them return, suits no longer white but stained with the colours of the landscape; reds and yellows and browns splattered all over and caked around their boots like mud.
And the smell of sulphur�like rot and the promise of fire�
He honed in on his father minutes later. He was about fifty yards west of the white room and approaching with a steady pace, his breathing calm, and his perspiration minimal.
There was another thud and he lost him. Nearby someone was shouting that engine number one had failed. This seemed to be of some consequence as the panic levels in the nearby crew rose considerably at the news. Something bad was happening.
It took more time to regain his focus, but when he once more separated his father from the rabble he found him standing on the opposite side of the door.
On one of his nights spent in the EVA chamber, one worker came in and suited up on his own. The brain was confused but intrigued. It was against the rules displayed on the walls of the chamber. No one was to EVA without backup. But regardless of this the man had checked the suit - alone - and left through the airlock. Curiosity made him follow. He folded flaps of flesh around his face to protect his airways and stepped out on the surface a pace behind the worker.
The calm exuded by his father from beyond the door was unsettling. The brain allowed adrenaline to flow and retracted the hooks from the floor. He retreated two steps and waited.
There were two clicks and the door opened.
His father looked at him, face devoid of expression, raised the gun he held in his hand and fired�
Despite the recklessness of his solo EVA, the man had had a legitimate reason for being outside. A radio antenna on the hull of the facility had become corroded through prolonged exposure to the acidic atmosphere and was in need of a replacement. He�d continued to follow as the man scaled the maintenance ladder towards the damage.
His body had been holding out against the thin unbreathable atmosphere, but it had been a trial. The brain had begun to struggle maintaining the shroud but he kept on.
Something about the man and his determination�
The bullet passed through the space he�d occupied a nanosecond before and slammed into the recliner with a pop. Then the chair exploded, throwing his father back against the corridor wall. The gun hit the floor and slid into an open vent.
But it didn�t matter. He was already away, moving across the ceiling - shrouded and heading east towards the EVA chamber.
At the junction he stopped and glanced back in the direction of the white room. His father was at the threshold of the door still, looking in his direction but seeing nothing. There were tears in his eyes. �Sorry�, he was saying. �So sorry�.
He didn�t understand, but later there would be time to think.
He dropped to the floor silently and continued down the corridor on foot. There was a sound, a fading echo��I love you��and then was gone.
His determination had ultimately been his downfall. The suit hadn�t been fitted correctly and had, with neither of them noticing, snagged itself on something on the way up, puncturing it imperceptably. The suit�s supply and the atmosphere of the satellite had slowly begun to merge.
His death had started with an intermittent cough. Nothing unusual. But the coughing had become more violent and the inside of the worker�s visor had soon begun to layer with flecks of blood. After four minutes he was motionless, struggling for breath and in obvious pain.
That had been the moment the shroud had failed�
Since he�d went through the change he�d had no need any longer to protect his airways from the near vacuum of the atmosphere, nor the dust that floated perpetually above the surface. So when he reached the airlock, he simply walked through the door and made his way along the surface, avoiding puddles of acid and sheltering as best he could from the corrosive sulphur snow. He kept going for a mile or two then stopped. From his vantage point he could see the cause of the facilities troubles. The ground had turned black beneath it�s tracks - half of which were glowing red with heat - and the whole massive vehicle seemed to be sinking into the regolith�
The man had been the first human other than his father and uncles to set eyes upon him and he�d been the last thing he�d ever seen. He�d said something before the light had went out of his eyes; mouthed a word and looked in the direction of the antenna. It had made no sense to him then and wouldn�t for some time to come.
The man had been discovered two hours later when he�d ensconced himself safely back into the white room. No mention had been made of it to him by his father, but the brain was to store it for a long while. Another puzzle to be solved�
The volcano erupted soundlessly. The tremors travelled outwards through the crust and he reacted by throwing himself flat to the ground, his bones elasticising to absorb the worst of the shock. When they subsided he looked up. The facility was gone; swallowed by the crater or buried beneath the fast-growing cinder cone and where it had been there was a column of ejecta reaching up into the darkness like a searchlight beam. The gravity wasn�t going to be strong enough to pull it all back down to earth, but what could not escape would return and the snow would become heavier.
He already knew what he was going to do and prepared himself accordingly.
Shortly afterwards he experienced the change and was no longer able to escape the room nor roam the facility. There was no more contact between himself and anyone other than his father. He never mentioned the man to him. Nor the word he had spoken when looking at the antenna.
It had been year three and his puzzlement had only just begun�
Finding a location from which to launch himself had been the hardest part. On such a flat world a hill was a rarity. Even the cinder cone from the infant volcano had begun to recede after a few hours. The shape of the world changed constantly. Pulled about between it�s sister satellites and it�s gas giant mother, it�s surface, though solid, had developed as many currents as an ocean. But he found an outcrop close to the newly formed crater to suit him.
His flesh flowed easily into the required shape and he aimed himself at the column of heated particles, gliding slowly into it�s path. Once in he reshaped himself once more. He became a parachute, trapping the heat beneath sheets of flesh and rising up out of the atmosphere of the world and into orbit with it�s mother.
What would become of him, he didn�t know. His father was dead beneath the surface of the world below him, gone to the same place as the man. Maybe he would follow soon, or maybe he would drift towards the home world and find the answer to the riddle.
He retracted his flesh, creating a cocoon around his body to protect from the radiation of space and prepared himself for shutdown.
Just before the sequence began, he found himself remembering the man and the word he had mouthed. He looked in the direction of the third planet, his eyes polarizing themselves in the glare of the star and mouthed the word himself�
�Mom��
Then closed his eyes to dream of sky.
Year nine was going to last for a long time.
